Police announced on Sunday that a 17-year-old boy and a 44-year-old man have been arrested in connection with the dog attack in Moortown, Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

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Neighbours who witnessed the mauling say the pensioner, named locally as Ronnie, looked to be in a ‘bad way’ as he was taken to hospital

The drama apparently unfolded when he heard a commotion and spotted two dogs which he believed were trapped in his front garden.

The officer sustained puncture wounds but two other men who lived in the same street remain in hospital with serious injuries (Picture: SWNS)

When he went to let them out at around 4.30am they reportedly turned on him .

The animals are believed to have originally escaped from a property near to the road, Garth Walk.

A next-door neighbour who stepped in to defend the man was hailed a ‘hero’ by witnesses.

He used a pan and bat to scare off the dogs before carrying the pensioner back into his house, it was claimed.

The man then returned outside to find another neighbour, believed to be the 59-year-old victim, across the road.

He had also been savagely bitten in the neck, arms and ‘had a chunk of his leg missing’, witnesses claimed.

The officer who has not been named remains in hospital but is in good spirits, West Yorkshire Police said (Picture: SWNS)

Neighbours said the man threw a plant pot at the animals before emergency services arrived on the scene.

A 50-year-old mum-of-one, who did not want to be named, said: ‘We got woken up about 4.30am and it sounded like revellers screaming.

‘Police cordoned all the street off and we later found out by a neighbour that Ronnie, who is an old man in his 70s, had got up to go to the toilet and saw these two American pitbulls in his front garden.

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‘He had come down because they were running around the garden as if they were trapped.’